Comment 2 for bug 288743

I managed to get this working (somewhat) with dkms, but it needs to be moulded into a package (openafs-modules-dkms or so). I have no experience with creating deb packages.

1. Dkms expects to find the source code in /usr/src/<module>-<version>/

If you have openafs-modules-source installed, the source is located in /usr/src/modules/<module>/
You have to symlink or copy this the source tree to the right location:
 sudo ln -sf /usr/src/modules/openafs /usr/src/openafs-1.4.7.dfsg1-6

2. Install the dkms.conf file in /usr/src/openafs-1.4.7.dfsg1-6 (attached, taken from the fedora package)

3. Add this source to the dkms tree:
 sudo dkms add -m openafs -v 1.4.7.dfsg1-6

4. Restart the dkms_autoinstaller
 sudo /etc/init.d/dkms_autoinstaller restart
This will be busy quietly compiling for a while. After it's done you will find the new module installed as /lib/modules/2.6.27-10-generic/updates/dkms/openafs.ko

5. Openafs tries to find the module in <moduledir>/fs, but it's not possible to install it there. Therefore you have to append the following lines to /etc/openafs/afs.conf:
 MODULEROOT=/lib/modules/`uname -r`
 MODULEDIR=$MODULEROOT/updates/dkms

6. Restart the openafs-client
 sudo /etc/init.d/openafs-client restart

I think this could be included in the openafs-modules-dkms package as follows:
- openafs-modules-dkms should install the source tree into /usr/src/openafs-<version>
- openafs-modules-dkms should automatically run 'dkms add' for this version (and 'dkms remove' on package removal or update)
- the openafs-client startup script should be modified to also search in the dkms module directory, or the afs.conf file should get some lines appended
- on next boot the dkms_autoinstaller will then compile and install the module, and openafs-client will find that module and load it